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Metro ink - 6.14.06

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BUGS AND BLOOMS

Mary and Stuart McCarty haven't used pesticides in their
flower and vegetable gardens for years. Nonetheless, the gardens are lush and
colorful: with rhododendron, dogwoods, iris, rhubarb, tomatoes, and beans.

"We don't use any chemicals, because they harm the birds,"
says Stuart McCarty. "We love watching the wildlife and we want to protect
them, not harm them with that stuff. And if there are weeds, we just pull them
out."

On Saturday, June 17, Rochester Against the Misuse of
Pesticides is sponsoring a tour of six gardens that are owner-maintained and
pesticide free. The tour runs from 10 a.m.
to 2 p.m.

"We've been providing the public with information about how
easy it is to create safe, pesticide and herbicide-free gardens for years,"
says Judy Braiman, a spokesperson for RAMP. "Now we
have a chance to show what other people have done so they can get ideas."

The gardens are at both city and suburban homes, and they
represent a variety of landscaping, from formal to free-style. Joseph deVita's city garden near Oxford Street and Monroe Avenue
shows what can be done with a small lot that has both sun and shade. "Of course
there are bugs," he says. "There are supposed to be, but the birds take care of
them. We've lived here for 18 years and we've never used any chemicals, because
we've always been concerned for our pets."

Braiman cautions gardeners against
using commercial fertilizers and planting mixes and suggests using their own
compost instead. "We've seen that these commercial products often contain high
amounts of heavy metals and chemicals that come right from the animal by-product,"
she says. "Chicken manure is often high in arsenic because chickens are often
fed arsenic, so it wouldn't be good for a vegetable garden."

RAMP's garden tour tickets are $12
in advance, $8 for seniors and $15 on the day of the tour. They can be
purchased at Parkleigh, 215
Park Avenue, or by calling 383-1317. The tickets
will contain a tour map with names and addresses of tour hosts.

--- by Tim Louis Macaluso

RITE AID REDUX

Frank De Blase

Developer's eyes are back on this Monroe Avenue block.

Developer Fred Rinaldi is back with another proposal to tear
down the old Monroe movie theater, now
the home of adult-entertainment business Show World. Rinaldi has submitted
plans to the city that call for demolishing the theater, the apartment building
at the corner of Monroe and South Goodman Street,
and two houses on Amherst Street.

But Rochester Zoning Director Art Ientilucci says its
unlikely that the city will approve the proposal. "In every way the plan is
deficient," he says. "The façade design is very poor in relation to the
streets. The orientation of the building is poor in relation to the street.
There's too much parking. It's detrimental to the Amherst
Street frontage. It's detrimental to development
along Monroe Avenue ...."
Ientilucci takes a breath. "Unfortunately there's not much merit to this plan."

About seven years ago, recalls former Southeast Area
Coalition leader Mary Wells, Rinaldi submitted a similar plan. At that time,
however, Rinaldi proposed both a Rite Aid and a Wendy's restaurant on the site.
This time, the fast food restaurant has been replaced with a larger Rite Aid, with
a drive-through. After the city rejected his initial plan, Rinaldi proposed
keeping the theater intact and putting the Rite Aid inside it, says Wells. But
even that plan seriously deviated from the city's design standards, says
Ientilucci.

As for the current plan: Rite Aid can apply for variances
--- a potentially huge task --- or go back to the drawing board, Ientilucci
says.

Rinaldi did not respond to requests for an interview.

--- Sujata Gupta

CRAWLING FOR DIALOGUE

William Pope.L has crawled his way
to the top of the New York City
performance-art scene. Pope.L --- who uses a
variation of his parents' names as his surname --- began crawling in the late
70's as a way to bring attention to the increasing number of homeless people he
was seeing on city streets, many of whom were lying on the sidewalks.

Pope.L joined them. Crawling on
his hands and knees of Manhattan's
busiest streets, he drew a range of responses from bystanders: sympathy, cups
of water, offers of help, frustration, ridicule, anger.
His "Great White Way,"
which has been favorably reviewed in national publications, is a work in
progress that is taking him from the Statue of Liberty to Broadway.

A recipient of three National Endowment of the Arts awards, Pope.L is a 2005 Guggenheim fellow and a professor at BatesCollege. And in 2004, he created
Black Factory, premiering at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. An
offshoot of his solo crawls, Black Factory is a "mobile social experiment" that
requires community participation. A three-person troupe arrives in town, visits
neighborhoods, and stops people on the street to engage them in a dialogue
about race in America.
As with the crawls, people respond differently. Over the course of the
four-hour performance, some debate, some laugh, and some just keep walking.

Black Factory will be in Rochester
on Monday, June 19, from 1 to 5 p.m., at Visual Studies Workshop, 31
Prince Street.

"The Black Factory is a conversation piece on wheels," says Alisia Chase, assistant professor at SUNY Brockport. "The
cast have already learned some of the things about the community they are
visiting that are important to people. Here they may talk about job loss or the
high murder rate."

Chase and her SUNY Brockport colleague Kitty Hubbard were
determined to bring Black Factory to Rochester.
"It's difficult sometimes to find artists who captivate my 18 to 22-year-old
students," she says. "It's hard finding work that they will relate to and still
challenge them."

The Black Factory tour bus is modeled after an old-time
Medicine Show. It operates a gift shop, and profits from items sold during the
tour are given to charities along the tour route. Profits from items sold in Rochester
will go to Friends Helping Friends.

--- Tim Louis Macaluso

ENVISIONING THURSTON

A design charrette five years ago
pushed forward the long-awaited Brooks Landing project --- which will
eventually include a café, hotel, and restaurant at the Brooks
Avenue-Genesee Street intersection. Now, residents
of the Thurston Road area
hope to spur similar growth along their commercial strip.

About 50 area residents, merchants, and others met at EbenezerBaptistChurch
on Thurston Road last week
to conduct an analysis of the area. They divided into small groups and
discussed the strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities of the nine-block
stretch between Ravenwood and Brooks Avenues.

Funded by the Rochester Area Community Foundation, the event
kicked off a familiar process: the charrette.
Visioning, explained the city's deputy economic development commissioner, Phil
Banks, is the first step in a four-step process. Next, the city will conduct an
economic analysis of the area, followed by the design charrette
itself, and then an action plan.

While the process can take years, it helps to create a
shared image for the area, which many agree is lacking. "If you drive through,
you really can't tell if it's on its way up or it's on its way down," said Tony
Clark, a Thurston Road
merchant and property owner.

Thurston houses more than 50 businesses and has about a 16
percent vacancy rate --- similar to many area malls, said Sector 4 Community
Development Small Business Manager John DeMott. The
area is also home to almost 40,000 residents and is intersected by five
different bus lines. The biggest challenge, says DeMott,
is convincing local residents to shop in the area.

While worried about drug activity and absentee landlords,
residents also expressed hope that Thurston Road
could create a unique identity for itself. "We probably are the perfect urban
village," said Josanne Reaves, a 19th Ward resident
and executive director of Leadership Rochester. Unique to the 19th Ward, she
said, is its large number of parks, sidewalks, and families with young
children.

To learn more about the event or to get involved, call the
Sector 4 Community Development Corporation, 328-5750.

--- Sujata Gupta

BOTTOMED OUT

Rochester, says
William H. Hudnut, III, has "bottomed out." And that,
he adds, is a good thing.

Hudnut is a senior fellow with the
Urban Land Institute --- a Washington D.C.-based research group that studies
land use --- the former mayor of Indianapolis,
and a former Rochesterian. In the area last week to
speak at NeighborWorks Rochester's annual luncheon, Hudnut talked with City about what Rochester
could do to turn itself into a thriving urban center. We are sitting in Bennigan's Grill and Tavern overlooking East
Main Street. Hudnut says
he remembers when this street really was Main Street.

Just out of sight is MidtownPlaza. "If it's failing, why keep
it?" Hudnut asks. While not directly involved with
the Urban Land Institute's analysis of Rochester's
downtown, Hudnut's thinking squares with that of his
colleagues. In addition to supporting their recommendation to demolish Midtown
(except for the tower), Hudnut agrees with ULI
analysts that Rochester can sustain
5,000 to 7,000 new downtown housing units.

In the five years since he last visited the area, Hudnut says, Rochester
officials have not done enough to promote downtown development. Neighborhoods,
though, seem to be making a comeback, says Hudnut,
who drove around some of Rochester's
hot and not-so-hot spots prior to his talk. "I can see positive changes like in
the Swillburg neighborhood compared to several years
ago," he says.

But Hudnut, a strong proponent of
regionalism, thinks poor cooperation between the city and surrounding
municipalities is one of the biggest impediments to growth. "You can't be a
suburb of nothing," he says. "You need to have a downtown that is vital or
revitalized to make it work." While he says he understands that both the city and
county have financial problems, he says that certain measures, such as
integrating the area's police forces or purchasing operations, could save
money.

And he hesitates to endorse the
city's recent proposal to take over control of Durand Eastman beach from the
county. "I bet you a lot of people that use that beach are not city residents,"
he says. "They're county residents. The county, I think, has the moral
responsibility to help with these recreational activities."

What area leaders need to do, says Hudnut,
is create discussion groups where people can air concerns and discuss
solutions. He points to the adoption of "Unigov" in Indianapolis,
a form of metropolitan government which merged some of that area's government
departments and services.

Rochester should
also avoid certain pitfalls, namely thinking too big, says Hudnut.
"I think you have to begin small and not look for the big hit," he says.
Thinking small for Hudnut means, among other things,
supporting small business initiatives and demolishing vacant houses. And Rochester,
he says, should start by revitalizing its center city. "Cities die from the
inside out, not the outside in," he says. "So it's important, I think, to begin
at the inside."